Obama's problem: too much like Lincoln.

Similarities:
- tall
- athletic
- big ears
- born elsewhere but elected from Illinois
- attorneys
- no previous executive experience
- limited electoral experience
- very good writers


Unlike most on this planet I have a dim view of Lincoln.  I've long thought that had he truly been great there would have been no civil war. At worst the Confederate states would have seceded and Lincoln would have have just let them go.  Think how much better the rest of us would be today without those states.


The Confederacy would have failed.  It's economy was not only based on slavery but was agrarian and without diversity.  It would have opposed a strong central bank as it opposed a strong central government, one of the reasons it lost the war.  Texas contributed very few soldiers, Virginia bore the brunt of the war and South Carolina instigated and started the war dragging the others along and then did not contribute its fair share.


The only country in the Americas which had slavery after the United States was Brazil, which abolished it in 1885.  No developed nation could have entered the 20th century as a slave nation.


The American Civil War was unnecessary.  Lincoln did not prevent it and mis-managed it throughout.  What salvaged Lincoln's legacy was his assassination, which because of the intense religious feeling at the time turned him into a martyr: father Abraham, the biblical figure with the biblical name, writing with biblical flair.  It also spared Lincoln from the drudgery of managing the reconstruction era in the confederate states, which he no doubt would have mis-managed as he had the war.  Charity for all is a nice sentiment but it's not policy.


I don't know how much President Obama fancies himself an ironic Lincoln, a black successor to the emancipator of black Americans, but he seems to share many of Lincoln's weaknesses.


Obama is mis-managing wars that do not need to be fought.  Obama relies on Congress to develop policy.  Obama hesitates, equivocates, disappoints.  Most of us who voted for him don't want to admit that he has been a disaster ... like Lincoln.